11 Arabs Slain in Attacks Near Jewish Communities; Curfew Imposed

June 30, 1939

JERUSALEM (Jun. 29)

Terrorists wielding gun, bomb and torch kept Palestine in continuing ferment today while the British military authorities took drastic measures to restore order.

A new wave of violence was climaxed early this morning by the fatal shooting of 11 Arabs and wounding of five others in six attacks in the Southern District. An official communique ascribed the attacks to “unknown Jews.” The military commander of the district imposed a road curfew, effective until four p.m. tomorrow, banning traffic to and from the affected areas of Tel Aviv, Rehovoth and Petach Tikvah.

Meanwhile, a “Thou Shalt Not Kill” manifesto was addressed to Palestine Jewry and to Jewish youth by 130 Jewish personalities headed by Miss Henrietta Szold. The manifesto urging observance of the Sixth Commandment, declares that the murder of innocent Arabs strengthens Arab support for the terrorists, the killing of Englishmen undermines the Jews’ position among the British people and endangers the sympathies of world democracy, and the murder of Jews by Jews is a signal for armed internal strife that is liable to obliterate the Palestine Jewish Community.

Fire last night in a Jewish National Fund forest near Kfar Hakoresh destroyed 25,000 pine trees. The fire, ascribed to Arabs, caused damage estimated at $15,000. Arab terrorists were also held responsible for the bombing late yesterday of a taxicab near Sarafand, in which two Jewish passengers were critically wounded.

New details of the police search yesterday in the Bokharian quarter told of brutal treatment accorded several hundred Jews rounded up in the Old City during the hunt for suspects in the shooting of an Arab. Three hundred Jews were said to have been kept standing for four hours under a hot sun in the courtyard of the Mea Shearim police station. Those detained ranged from youths to white-bearded elders. They included well-known and respected residents and several rabbis. Some had been taken from their beds and driven through the streets in nightclothes to the police station.

In the hot courtyard, the Jews were guarded by British policemen and held without drinking water or sanitary facilities. Those who tried to approach a garden hose to take a drink were allegedly driven off with blows. Jewish women from the neighborhood brought water but a British officer spilled it on the ground. During the four-hour wait, a number of Jews were said to have been beaten without cause.

Finally, the Arab victim of the shooting, whose leg had been slightly injured, was brought in on an armchair and the Jews were paraded before him. He picked out two young brothers as his assailants and four greybeards as those who aided in their getaway. These were arrested and the remainder, after waiting considerably longer, were ordered home and forced to leave through a narrow gate where they ran a gauntlet of uniformed British policemen on the outside and plainclothemen on the inside. The policemen, laughing, allegedly beat the fleeing Jews with gunstocks and rubber hose.

Other residents of the neighborhood informed the J.T.A. that all day long uniformed British policemen sporadically beat unoffending Jewish passersby.

Violence in other parts of Palestine yesterday included the fatal shooting in Nazareth of an Arab detective by two Arabs. A British constable accompanying the detective was shot and seriously wounded but succeeded in killing one of the assailants.